This week’s readings on
Vietnam focuses on Vietnam’s challenges not only in forming its national
aesthetics, but also in finding a way to redevelop itself as a nation after the
countries “crisis” brought by separation of nationalism and communism, and the forceful
refuge of Vietnamese residences to other parts of the nation brought by the
Vietnam War and eventually the Secret War. With only the reason to prove itself
as a superpower nation through victory and taking Vietnam’s natural resources,
the United States unreasonably and pointlessly involved itself in the Vietnam
War, in a country that its citizens were not familiar. Its aim was to win, thus
“from 1961 to 1971, the US military sprayed chemical products that contained
large quantities of dioxin”, according to Marjorie Cohn’s “Agent Orange:
Terrible Legacy of the Vietnam War” (Cohn 2015). The irony is that Agent Orange
was once a top selling herbicide brand for American consumers; after
understanding its life threatening affects on plants and other sources of
contact, Agent Orange is now used on another country to destroy the life,
lifestyle, and livelihood of those peoples. In the turn of the century, Vietnam
has since been redeveloping itself, its economy, its people, and its national
aesthetic through what appears to be the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). It
appears that it has been decided that only trading and trade agreements are the
only options in redeveloping and rebranding a nation, despite the historical
damage that economic building and international “relations” has done.
Question: Are
there any updates on Vietnam’s plans in regard to its redevelopment and the
Trans-Pacific Partnership?
Works Cited:
Cohn, Marjorie. “Agent Orange: Terrible Legacy of the Vietnam War.” Huffington Post. 1 May. 2015. Web. 19
Feb. 2016. < http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marjorie-cohn/agent-orange-terrible-legacy_b_7189938.html>
Gurtov, Mel. “The
Trans-Pacific Partnership: A Deeply Flawed Partnership.” Asian-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Vol. 13, Issue 20, No. 1. 13
May. 2015. Web. 19 Feb. 2016.
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